JUNE
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Icelandic artist Arnor Bieltvedt originally planned to follow the family tradition and become a businessman. He’d already gone through college as a business major and completed a master’s degree when a friend asked him to paint a portrait and, he says, “a door opened.” Bieltvedt started all over, earning an undergraduate degree in art from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Washington University. Now head of the art department at North Shore Country Day School, he’s painting the local landscape and says he sees a relationship between the portrait work he started with and his current expressionistic renderings of nature. Whatever the subject, he says, “You’re representing some kind of life force and your own life at the same time.” His mixed-media paintings can be seen at Anne Loucks Gallery, 309 Park in Glencoe. Gallery hours are 11:30 to 5 Tuesday through Saturday; call 847-835-8500.
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“I think people are really interested in finding out what’s happening on the ground; I think they get overwhelmed by the headlines,” says a spokesperson for the Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine, the sponsors of tonight’s free lecture and discussion, Eyewitness Palestine: An Evening With International Solidarity Movement Activists Henry Herskovitz and Michael Levin. The ISM, a group that uses nonviolent direct action to protest Israel Defense Forces activities in the occupied territories, was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize last month (the Nobel committee singled out three members, including the late Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an IDF bulldozer in March, for special recognition). The event starts at 7:30 at the Maze branch of the Oak Park Public Library, 845 S. Gunderson in Oak Park; for more information call 312-427-2533, ext. 18, or see www.palsolidarity.org.
